


Before She Was the Moon

by miss_sonder



Series: Of These Salted Lands I'll Bring Peace [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aangst, Angst, Creation, Culture, Duty, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Legends, Moon Spirit - Freeform, Myths and folklore, Northern Water Tribe, Reincarnation, Sacrifice, Spirit World, Spirits, The Gaang - Freeform, War, Water tribe, Waterbending & Waterbenders, Yue centric, idk how to tag this, kinda sad, myths, tradition, tui and la, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27516733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_sonder/pseuds/miss_sonder
Summary: Before she was the moon, she had been named Yue.
Relationships: La/Tui (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar)
Series: Of These Salted Lands I'll Bring Peace [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012413
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Before She Was the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Dear reader,  
> I come from a very spiritual family, Hungarian on my mother’s side and Tibetan/Korean on my father’s side. I inherited my Nagyi’s diaries and she wrote of how children were wise beyond their years, how they knew things that they learned in the womb from spiritual beings that they would lose as they grew older. She wrote of things that I had told her, young and still round from being a babe, how I told her “Nagyi, Papa is in the sky now,” and twenty minutes later we get a call saying he passed away. I wish my Hungarian was better and I could share more of her and my families’ beliefs and experiences. I projected my beliefs into this story, but I do not in any way want to diminish the characters' cultures, so I did not add any religious undertones to this story (hopefully).

When she was born she was cold and still, and so very, very weak. She had cried very softly and with great struggle took in shallow breaths, small hands reaching for her mother--desperately wanting to go back into the womb that once sheltered her. She was already exhausted and weary, she had faint memories of things that had not yet happened and fading knowledge of what she must do. She had cried once and grew still as death. 

Her father, a man of a great importance (the most important thing that he would ever accomplish would be siring her, but he would not know that until he looked at the full moon on his deathbed), had rushed to a very sacred place. Her mother followed, a woman of few words and strong actions disguised with submission, and made no sound as they placed her body in the cool water of  _ push _ and  _ pull _ . 

She knew their names before she knew her own.  _ Tui _ and  _ La. _ Her father begged for mercy and for their child to be blessed with life, and for a moment, her infant mind thought him foolish to ask so much of a spirit. But  _ Tui _ and  _ La, pushed  _ and  _ pulled.  _ She felt no different, but her lungs held more air and when she was older (after she forgot all those feelings of infanthood, the dread of her duties and the memories of things that had not happened yet) her mother would tell her she came out of the  _ Oasis _ with hair white as crestfallen snow. 

Her childhood was filled with duty (and the foreboding sense of sacrifice). She played with dolls her father bought in the Earth Kingdom, a strange and far off place that had a magical city named Ba Sing Se. Her dolls wore dresses in styles that nobody wore here, but she found them to be beautiful, and they were made so fragile from a thing called porcelain--a type of earth that was like the stained ice in her windows. Somedays, when her mother was busy and Father did not have time to mind her, she’d sneak off and sled ride with the other children. 

“Princess Yue,” Sama had told her once. She was a pretty little girl whose mother had already started to bead her hair. “If you get hurt, I’ll help you hide your sled and we’ll sneak you back.” 

Yue smiled. “Thank you ‘Ma.” 

Besides her days being filled with play, they were filled with lessons. Some days were lessons only her mother could teach. Those were the days she had come to dread. The days where she must sit so beautifully and speak so clearly (and must never say what she truly thought). Her mother, though, would offer kindness in small ways--always threading the needles she struggled with, giving her the imported chocolates while she braided her hair in complicated styles, just small offerings that she knew would make Yue smile. 

Yue never complained. 

She never complained when the New Moon phased into her life. She didn’t complain on the nights the moon was gone and how her body ached and felt like her broken doll from the Earth Kingdom. She never complained when her father favored the men in her tribe, she’d smile and take the gentle tasks, and never complained even when her mother lost her seemingly limitless patience. She hadn’t complained when she had her first blood, on the Full Moon, a blessed sign, and hadn’t complained even though the pain had crippled her and made her lame. 

“Her head is always in the clouds.” Her father had once complained. 

Her mother was silent. Neither of her parents knew she was in the hall outside their room. She had been planning on climbing out onto the roof, to see the moon, and ask the questions that no one seemed to know. (But the moon seemed to know.) Her mother was weaving, while her father paced the room. 

“Well?” He asked his wife. 

His ever patient wife looked up from her work. “Come, husband, let’s go to bed. Our daughter is fine, even with her head in the sky.”

Yue didn’t talk to the moon that night.

When she was nine there had been murmurs and gossip of the Dragon of the West, how his only son had fallen in battle. There had been quiet and then a brave whisper, who shared the legend of the son who had turned into the sun. Those rumors made their way all the way to the North Pole, bringing with them the news of how the Dragon of the West had fallen the great walls of Ba Sing Se, but that the dragon had been slain. 

“Stop!” Her mother had shouted in her one moment of defiance. “No more of this nonsense.” 

(Her mother had cried for the dragon that night while her husband slept peacefully and as her daughter slept ten feet away. A son is a son, even after he becomes one with the sun. She cried in a selfish way, because she saw how her daughter spoke and lived like the boy who became the sun.) 

Some nights, usually when the moon was half full, Yue would have dreams of a boy from her sister tribe, with pretty blue eyes and a nice laugh, or a girl whose eyes matched the boys, but had powerful waves and a large heart. Other nights she would dream of a bright blue light and of a child with the weight of the world and a destiny much greater than any other. Usually, though, her dreams were filled with an angry ocean, waves crashing, reaching, grasping, taking. 

She’d wake up, after her dreams shaking, not from the cold, but from fear and some dread. But then, she would get dressed, break her bread and say her morning thanks--never offering to share what was going on in her head. Those mornings she would sit and smile, listen to her father’s dreams--so nonsensical, so harmless--and her mother’s plans for the day. Smile and make her way through the day like she always would. 

Yue was sixteen when she knew she didn’t have much longer. She was sixteen when a stone rested heavily in the hollow of her neck, when a boy with pretty blue eyes and a nice laugh burst through her tribe’s walls, when a girl whose eyes matched the boys created waves in her own destiny, when rumors of a war had spread so far up north, when a child with the weight of the world made her laugh, and when she knew that this is what she had been waiting for. She was sixteen and knew that she would never be seventeen. 

His name was Sokka, the boy with pretty blue eyes and a nice laugh, and he was from her sister tribe. He had asked her if she had wanted to do an activity with him, and she had laughed, and said yes. He had shown her the ocean from the back of the great sky bison, Appa, and had told her words that made her heart flutter. Sokka, the boy from the South Pole, took her for walks and let  _ her  _ talk. And she knew then that when it was time for her to leave that she would hurt. 

She had wept so bitterly that night. 

It was easy to fall in love with him. What with the way he paid so much attention and foolishly believed that she was the one who had painted the stars in the night sky. The way he held her hand, mitten against mitten, tribe with tribe, she had never felt more beloved than that moment. And the way his lips were soft against her’s, pressed so dearly that she had promised herself to never forget that moment, even as she told him she could no longer see him--that she was promised to another. (And she did remember that kiss, even now.) 

Hahn, betrothed, was an arrogant man and hard to tolerate. Her father had told her it was her duty, her mother had stood next to him silently, and Yue had not bothered to argue. But now, with Sokka there, tempting her with sinful possibility and hope she couldn’t afford to have, she had grown a certain distaste for Hahn and was happy to hear he had volunteered during the siege. (She had regretted that thought immediately, ashamed she could feel something so bitter, something so cruel, something so  _ human _ .) 

There was a lot that happened, and Yue only knew of some that had gone on, but suddenly the sky and everything it touched was red, such an angry and desperate red. And then black. She had suddenly felt such a great emptiness, hallowed out of her soul, and knew no hope. (Not even the sweet kind Sokka had dared to give her.) 

Then, the boy with the weight of the world and who had made her laugh not too long ago, summoned the ocean--or the ocean summoned him--and wreaked havoc unto man. The angry waves and vengeance wroughting destruction matched the dreams that made her body ache and she knew that soon she would be gone. But for now she must be strong. And finish what  _ they _ had started. 

“It gave me life. Maybe I can give it back.” She had said. (And she knew those words to be true. She knew that is what she must do.) 

“No!” Sokka said. “You don’t have to do this.” 

But she did. So it must be. 

She took Tui, the name she knew before her own-- _ push _ now without  _ pull _ \-- into her mitted hands (letting go of the boy with pretty blue eyes and a nice laugh), before she took a deep breath knowing that it would be her final. She felt the boy she gave her mortal heart, her limited life, her soul that she did not own, hold her as her body grew colder. (And she had felt so very sad.)

And when she layed in his arms, not meant for this land of ice and snow and hurt and love, she still felt so tired. Now, she lay, cold and still like the day she was born, and knew that now she could finally rest. Her duty was done and she could go back home. Home to _push_ , home to _pull._ _Tui_ and _La_. She was exhausted from her memories and heavy heart that she claimed as hers--and during the _in between_ , _in between_ being Yue and being the moon, she had been offered not to remember those things, the things that made her human, the things that made her sacrifice worth the hurt, but she had vehemently refused--and finally found peace.

  
Because now she was the moon and balance was restored. _Push_ and _pull._ _Tui_ and _La_. But before she was the moon, she was just a girl. Before she was the moon she was in love. Before she was the moon, she was Yue.


End file.
